1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to bags and other items that are compressible and storable.
2. Description of Related Art
Bags of one sort or another are ubiquitous in most cultures. At some point, nearly everyone needs to carry something, protect an item, or carry several things together, and a wide variety of bags have evolved to meet those different needs. Available bags range from utilitarian paper and plastic grocery sacks costing a few cents each to designer purses and satchels costing many hundreds of dollars each.
Most bags present a conundrum: the larger the bag, the more objects it can hold and the more potentially useful it may be; however, large bags can be cumbersome to carry around, and most people need a large bag for only a short time, for example, after a shopping trip. The typical solution to this conundrum is to fold or stuff a larger bag into a smaller bag until it is needed. Unfortunately, many large bags take up a considerable amount of space even when folded. Additionally, a large bag may become wrinkled from storage in a smaller bag. Wrinkling may be acceptable when the bags are utilitarian grocery sacks, but is generally unacceptable with more valuable bags, which are hard to unwrinkle and may be permanently damaged.
Similar problems often occur with other carry-along items, such as blankets, towels, sweatshirts, and other types of apparel. These items are sometimes needed only for short periods of time, yet often need to be carried on an entire outing so that they are available when needed. Some apparel items, such as light jackets, are sold with “stuff sacks” or other forms of storage container that make it easier to carry them when not in use, but those storage containers become yet another item that must be carried and can easily be lost or forgotten.